There's many ways to use Twitter and perhaps most important, there's many ways that a business can take advantage of Twitter to support marketing efforts, branding, customer support, and most important, to communicate with clients and would-be clients. The following are 5 ways that any GIS/Geo business can use Twitter to support their business.
Organize your Team & Use lists
Before you jump in and tell your staff to start tweeting, figure out if you need some company policies and setup standards, in particular, naming conventions. If you Tweet simply as @yourname then I'm going to infer that its a personal twitter account and thus will subject me to a wide range of topics. However, if your twitter name reflects your company then I'm going to expect company related information from that account. For many avid Twitter users, multiple accounts is easily done and simple to manage. An example, you can find my personal account via @gletham, however, GISuser specific content is found at @GISuser. The focus of the accounts is also easily discernable by the Twitter account design (geo background and use of logos), bio, and related information.
Twitter can quickly and easily become a little overwhelming. You can't possibly see everything nor can you effectively follow everyone, however, lists can help you to filter out specific information to make it a little easier for you. Twitter currently allows for the creation of 20 lists. consider creating lists of specific topics of information that ae important to your business. Consider also creating a news list where you can see industry news tips (add @GISuser to it for starters ;0) and consider also creating a list to watch your competition. As an example, I have a few lists categorized by the following interest of mine:
iPhone - people tweeting about iPhone news and iPhone dev tips
ESRI - this is where I can easily find ESRI staffers
Google - all about Google and stacked with Google staffers
Industry Visionaries - this is my "elite" list of people I really want to watch Keep in mind, you can always create a list and make it private so you won't have to worry about others
GIS Companies, a useful list of corporate GIS company Twitter accounts
Figuring out who you're watching!
When working with lists keep in mind that you'll want to use a Twitter client that enables you to easily build you lists. For example, I have a simple, light-weight mobile client for iPhone called Echofon. It's not hugely powerful, however, it does enable me to easily add people to lists, something other mobile apps simply don't do as well. Apparently the Echofon for Mac client supports lists very well and will even give you an audio "wake up" when someone for a specific list updates their twitter.
Listen for your name
Make sure you use a Twitter client that informs you when people @mention you or DM (direct contact) you. Consider also using Twitter Search (search.twitter.com) to search for your name, your company, and your brand. Again, your ideal Twitter client should support the creation of columns that deliver search results for specified terms - I use Tweetdeck Mobile on iPhone to creeate columns for specific keyword seaches, this is particularly useful during events... imagine, during the coming ESRI User Conference having a dedicated column serving on mentions from or about the event and contain the event hashtag #ESRIuc.
Listening for your name is very important from a customer feedback and tech support capacity. Imagine an end-user who hears from you immediately after he rants about having a problem with your app. Perhaps someone is boasting about your product, this is a great chance for you to thank someone for their love!
Share Multi-Media
Photos, audio clips (or audio blogs), and videos are very popular and take loads of effort to create. If you create and publish a video clip you'll want to share details of that with your followers. There's a number of Twitter add-ons like TwitPic, TwitVid etc... that support archiving media that is sent from your tweets. Even better, connect your media sharing resources (youTube, flickr, Qik) with Twitter so that whenever you update these servcies with new media a Tweet is automatically sent. An example, if I happen to be visiting you while at a conference, I may upload a photo to flickr. My account is setup so that my Twitter account gets a notice and then Twitter updates my facebook... voily, with one click I've potentially notified thousands of people about a new photo!
YouTube is very valuable for Geo tech companies, particularly since this is such a visual industry! Consider using a YouTube account to support your customers and even as part of your PR and marketing efforts. Something you may not be aware of is that users of your YouTube account who "favorite" your videos may also be auto-Tweeting that they are doing so... this is powerful! An example, if I watch your latest video and add it to my favorites or perhaps I subscribe to your YouTube Channel, my account is setup so that a Tweet is sent saying something to the effect of "I just favorited a video from company X - and then adds a link to the video"... voila, instant followers for you!
Tweet from events
One of the most powerful uses of Twitter (in my mind) is the use of the service from conferences. Many users are glued to their twitter accounts when on the road in order to stay in touch with their colleagues and obtain breaking information to help them with their conference experience. Imagine getting updates from companies... "Come to Booth 300 in 15 minutes for a chance to win an iPad" or perhaps a reminder "be in Hall A in 5 minutes for the keynote session". Perhaps the best use is to locate someone that you can't reach... guaranteed if you send me a DM asking me to meet you for a beer and to see your latest app, I'll be there!
Businesses that are exhibiting at an event should use their corporate Twitter accounts to:
upload photos from the event - people dig seeing real-time photos from places they can't get to
Tweet updates and times for special presentations that your company is involved in
Tweet details of parties or other social events that you are encouraging people to attend
Follow the event hashtag and communicate with people that are at the event
Tweet some live video streams of your booth (Qik, uStream and other mobile apps are simple and very useful for this)
Promote what clients and business partners are doing at the event
Scheduling and multiple account management
Many companies will have multiple social media accounts (facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and have a need for a simple, effective tool to manage these accounts. Become familiar with a resource like Su.Pr or perhaps even better, HootSuite. Hootsuite is a powerful tool that helps you manage multiple accounts, has built-in support for teams and multi-user access, provides scheduling, reveals stats, and supports RSS feeds. Imagine, with these options you can submit your post to multiple twitter accounts, multiple social services with one click. Scheduling is very useful as you can schedule a tweet to blast several times in a day for maximum exposure. Finally, if you have a website or blog that you update frequently you can feed your RSS feed to Hootsuite to automatically update your social media accounts when your site is updated... powerful!
This list is just a start, however, these are important considerations for any would-be Twitter "power user". For even more useful tips, check out this great resource from Chris Brogan - 50 Tips for Twitter for Business Users http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/
How does your business use Twitter? Shoot us an email info at gisuser.com or ping us on Twitter @GISuser
Finally, don't look at Twitter to replace your PR or marketing efforts, rather, use it as a tool to complement your efforts and extend your reach!
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